1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a system and method for tracking the activity of caller/clients visiting recipients, more particularly, the invention relates to a system and method for communicating with a remote caller/client and then identifying the caller/client and the caller/client's location.
2. Description of Related Art
Many businesses provide products and services requiring that employees visit the recipients of the products and services. For instance, many health care providers send nurses to the homes of patients. Similarly, parcel delivery services deliver parcels directly to businesses and individuals. These businesses will frequently benefit from tracking when their employees arrive at and depart from particular locations.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,183 to Katz discloses a computer system for recording remotely, through a telephone network, the arrival and departure times of field based employees at various work sites. The system detects from a calling employee automatic number identification data (ANI) and further accepts personal identification codes from the caller. The ANI is used to identify the calling telephone.
Personal identification codes which are manually entered into a keypad can be entered by any individual. Accordingly, mere receipt of a manually entered personal identification code does not assure that the person entering the personal identification code is the person assigned to the personal identification code.
An ANI identifies the phone which made an incoming call. When the phone is a standard land line phone, the phone identity can be used to identify the address where the phone is located. However, if the phone used to make the incoming call is a cellular phone, the ANI alone cannot be used to determine the location of the phone.
A system and method for monitoring caller/clients is needed which can accurately identify the caller/client making the phone call and can identify the location of the phone call when the phone call is placed from a cellular phone.